


Royai Week 2020 - Prompt Four: Crackle

by royza_hawkstang



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, royaiweek20
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:48:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24669406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/royza_hawkstang/pseuds/royza_hawkstang
Relationships: RoyAi
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	Royai Week 2020 - Prompt Four: Crackle

## Crackle

She had no idea he was on his way to see her. Roy had kept the fact of his brief furlough from almost everyone; Vanessa had met him at the train station and run interference with the Madame so that he could sneak into the bar and surprise his mother. But when he had left Central this morning, heading east on the train, no one in the small town knew he was coming… least of all one Miss Riza Hawkeye.

Solstice had only been the week before, and he hated the thought of her rattling around that big, empty house alone. It had always been a quiet, almost melancholy place to begin with; he couldn’t imagine how it must feel now, only a few months after her father’s death.

Roy refused to let the somber thoughts gather too much power over him. He had been lucky enough to spend Solstice with his family, and now, he was dead-set on spending New Year’s with his old Master’s quiet, pretty daughter.

On spending it with his friend.

The word still didn’t sound right. ‘Friend’ seemed so… banal, so understated for describing their kind of…. His mind balked at the word ‘relationship’ as well. To him, that meant a girlfriend, a lover, not… whatever he and Riza were.

_Accomplices_ , his mind whispered. Roy shivered, and tried – unsuccessfully to convince himself it was from the chill of the three-mile walk from the town to her house.

He turned off the road to cross a farmer’s barren, snow-covered field, following the shortcut to the Hawkeye house that he and Riza had used dozens of times in days gone by. More innocent days, back when what they had could still be called a friendship. Since the day she had showed her secrets, though, that word had had to change. _A connection._ Roy considered it. Something that went unspokenly deeper than mere camaraderie, but only when you knew to look for it.

One gloved hand patted the pocket of his heavy winter coat, reassuring himself that the box was still there. Her Solstice gift, a few days late but still something he hoped she would like. A thought occurred, and he pulled the small parcel from his pocket.

It was nothing fancy – a delicately filigreed picture frame and a photograph – but the same paranoia had gripped him three times since leaving for his furlough. The fear that due to its delicate construction, some part of the frame or its glass pane might break before it found itself in Riza’s hands.

He felt carefully at the cardboard box beneath the paper, checking for dents or punctures and finding neither. Lifting the little packet to his ear, he shook it gently, alert for any sound of broken metal or glass.

Roy was still listening, still gently shaking when, on his next step, his foot sank to the knee in a snowdrift and he lost his balance. He pitched forward, the gift flying from his hand to sail in an ungainly arc. It landed on, and went skidding across, the frozen surface of a nearby pond, leaving a trail of ploughed up powder in its wake.

He pulled his face up from the snow, spitting rapidly melting flakes and shaking clumps of them from his hair. Dark eyes searched briefly, frantically, before widening as they spotted the wayward gift.

“Dammit,” he muttered, pulling himself up. “If it wasn’t broken before, it sure as hell is now….”

Stepping carefully, he made his way to the edge of the pond and tentatively slid a foot onto the snow-dusted ice. A quick check showed it to be following the saying Riza had taught him: ‘thick and blue, safe for you. Thin and crispy, way too risky.’ This was reflecting the grey sky overhead, so it wasn’t blue, but it certainly seemed thick enough to support his weight.

He eased further from the bank, moving one careful step at a time The ice was a little bit rough-textured, but still slippery, and while simply walking might not break it, a fall almost definitely would.

Roy was perhaps five steps from retrieving the present when the ice beneath his foot gave a soft, ominous creak.

Gritting his teeth, he forced himself to keep moving; standing still would only make the ice crack faster. _It’s just one weak spot,_ he told himself. _They’re more common close to the centre like this, but it’s okay. Just get her gift and get clear._

He had just managed to pick up the gift and straighten up when the ice under his feet gave a final crackle like the burst of a firework… and shattered.

Roy dropped almost straight down into the water, only coming to a stop as his feet hit the bottom, the icy water sloshing around his waist. His surprised yell died in a hurried gasp of shock as the cold hit first his feet, then his knees, and then – most uncomfortably – his groin.

The gasp faded into a groan as he folded involuntarily forward, resting his chest and forehead on the ice. One hand held the present aloft, well clear of the water. He needed to get out, he knew, and he would have to be careful, but for the moment, the cold shock wouldn’t allow him to move.

“You all right, there, son?”

He lifted his head, finding a man in a coat and overalls – likely the farmer who owned the property – nearby. He stood with his hands on his hips, watching Roy with a mixture of concern and bemusement.

“Uh… yeah. Yeah, I think so. Hang on….”

Moving carefully, he hauled himself out of the hole in the ice on his stomach, using an all-too-well-practiced military-style belly crawl to reach the edge of the pond. Once there, the farmer grasped him by the arm, helping him to stand.

“You can’t stay in those wet clothes and boots, boy.” He waved to a farmhouse not too far away. “Come on back to the house with me; my wife’ll see you get warm and get some dry clothes.”

Well, it was certainly better than showing up on Riza’s doorstep soaked through and shivering. “Thanks, I appreciate it.” Roy nodded back toward the pond as they started off. “Sorry for the trouble. I suppose that’ll teach me not to test my luck with winter ice.”

“I suppose so.” The man gave him a sidelong glance. “What were you doing way out here?”

A bit of colour seeped into Roy’s cheeks that wasn’t from the chill air. “I was trying a shortcut to get to the Hawkeye place. Berthold was my alchemy teacher until he passed, and his daughter Riza is a friend–” That word again. “– of mine. I thought I’d surprise her for a belated Solstice.” He smile lopsidedly. “Might be a little extra belated, now.”

The farmer stopped, and it took Roy’s slowly numbing feet another few steps to do the same. “I don’t know how good of friends the two of you are,” the older man said slowly, with the air of someone who knows they are delivering bad news. “But, uh… nobody’s been in that house for, oh… a good four months, now.”

Roy felt his jaw drop. “What?!”

“Little Miss Hawkeye, she pulled up stakes and moved,” was the reply. “I can’t tell you where, since I don’t know as if she told anyone where she was going… but you won’t find her here, boy.”

* * *

He came across it in one of the boxes after moving to Central. Lifting out the little box – looking admittedly worse for wear after several years – he turned it over in his hands and winced at the sound of shifting glass shards and metal. His old worry had finally come true; it was well and truly broken.

“What do you have there?”

Half-startled, he glanced back over his shoulder to see Riza re-entering the room, her head tilted curiously. “A keepsake?”

“Technically, yes.” He held it out to her. “But it’s more for you than me. I got this for you a long time ago; I think it’s high time you had it.”

Still curious, she took the box, her eyebrows lifting. “You weren’t kidding when you said ‘a long time.’” Her fingers touched the faded, slightly frayed red ribbon. “What’s the occasion?”

“Originally, it was for Solstice.” Slipping his hands into his pockets, he shrugged. “I think it was for… Solstice 1905? I made a trip to your hometown, made it most of the way to your dad’s place before I found out you weren’t there.”

“1905… I’d left for the Academy at the end of that summer.” Riza smiled, the expression a little bewildered and taken aback. “You’ve held on to this for almost ten years?”

“Like I said, it’s high time you had it.”

She undid the ribbon and pulled back the white – now a decidedly off-white – paper to expose the dinged and dented cardboard box. She moved to pull off the lid… just as Roy remembered something important.

“You’re going to want to be careful,” he said hurriedly. “It isn’t in one piece anymore. Here….” He stepped forward, helping her to gingerly remove the lid from the filigreed frame – broken now on two sides– and a pane of glass that lay in several small shards.

Riza ignored the damage, picking delicately past the glass to pluck the photograph free. “Roy…. This is….” She set the box to one side on a stack of his looseleaf research documents, freeing her hand to cover her mouth in shock. “This was taken at that carnival that came through town, the summer you finished your apprenticeship.”

“Only a couple of weeks before I left for the Academy myself,” he said quietly. “The memory of the day that photo was taken… it got me through some of the tougher days of basic training.”

She looked up, smiling. When she gave the photo a small wave, the paper crackled. “And so you thought to share that happiness with me, while you were going to be away.” Setting it aside with the box and broken frame, she took a step closer. “Thank you, Roy. I’ll get a new frame for it, and I’ll keep it safe.” Her hand grasped his gently. “That was a very happy time for me, too.”

In the photograph, a young Riza, barely sixteen, had her hair cut short above the high collar and longer sleeves of a simply-styled but pretty dress. Her right hand descended out of frame to hold the hand of the boy pictured there.

Roy’s bangs had yet to grow so that they nearly fell into his eyes, a faint blush visible as a slight change in the sepia toning of the image. He was laughing, one eye squeezed shut as his Master’s daughter pressed a sweet, soft kiss to his cheek.

Mimicking the image of her younger self, Riza rose slightly on her toes, pressing a kiss to his cheek, just below the cheekbone, just as Roy broke into that same boyhood lopsided grin.


End file.
